Industrial Relations in Europe 2012 - European Commission - Europa

State-centred, including Greece, Spain, France, Italy and Portugal;
Liberal, including Cyprus, Ireland, Malta and the UK; and
Mixed or Transitional, including Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Hungary, Poland Romania and Slovakia.
The Organised Corporatism model is characterised by a high degree of organisational density,
high collective bargaining coverage and fairly high interaction of social partners with the state
but also a relatively high fragmentation of the social partner system in terms of a high number
of both unions and employers’ associations. The Social Partnership group clusters countries
with a medium organisational membership density and high rates of collective bargaining
coverage at high level of centralisation. Another characteristic is the relatively high
fragmentation of actors and high levels of social partner interaction with the state. Countries
in the State-centred group are similar to Organised Corporatism countries, with the exception
that the involvement of social partners with the state which is quite low, and there is a much
lower degree of centralisation of collective bargaining. The group of Liberal countries display
average organisational density of actors, high collective bargaining coverage at a very
decentralised level, low fragmentation of actor organisations, and almost no interaction with
state authorities. The countries in the Mixed group are distinct from all former groups because
the industrial relations system is characterised by low organisational density of actors, few
actors (mainly because employers’ organisation do not exist), low collective bargaining
coverage at a decentralised level and no interaction with state authorities.
Bechter, Brandl and Meardi (2011, 2012) looked at whether the national classification holds
for all private sectors in the EU Member States. They were able to show that many private
sectors are substantially different in their industrial relations system characteristics from the
national and identified sectoral systems of industrial relations for the EU-27 countries. For
instance, it was shown that industrial relations in the majority of the EU-27 countries in the
hairdressing and other beauty treatment sector share the characteristics of the Mixed system
(which they labelled as an Empty system). This is due to the fact that collective bargaining
coverage, the organisational density of social partners and their fragmentation is low or
sometimes even non-existent, collective bargaining is rather decentralised and collective
bargaining coverage low. They also showed, for example, that industrial relations in the sea
and coastal water transport sector is described in the majority of countries by very similar
characteristics to the Organised Corporatism system (which they labelled as a Dense system)
as actors are strong and well organised (in particular, union density is high), the fragmentation
of the union system is intermediate (compared to other sectors) and collective bargaining
coverage is high. In order to enable a proper differentiation between the sectoral and national
typology Bechter, Brandl and Meardi (2011, 2012) also rename the remaining three industrial
relations systems: Social Partnership becomes Political, State-centred becomes Lean, and
Liberal becomes Fragile.
Similar to the Social Partnership system, the Political system is characterised by rather high
levels of centralisation and high coverage of collective as well as an intermediate
organisational density (especially of unions). The main characteristics of the Lean system are
its intermediate organisational density of trade unions, the high fragmentation of actors, an
intermediate level of collective bargaining but relatively high collective bargaining coverage.
Finally, the Fragile system is described by an intermediate, but still relatively high,
organisational density, relatively high collective bargaining coverage, an intermediate
fragmentation of unions, and a relatively low degree of centralisation of collective bargaining.
A similar identification for the public sector does not exist. Therefore, in this section of the
chapter, public sector industrial relations systems are identified and compared to the
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